What is an Altcoin? – CryptoCurrency Facts

Believe it or not, Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency! There are thousands of cryptocurrency alternatives to Bitcoin available today each with unique differences, functionalities, and purposes.

Semantics: Altcoin isnt the name of a cryptocurrency. Rather, the term altcoin describes any cryptocurrency alternative to Bitcoin. For example, Ripple, Litecoin, and Ethereum are all technically altcoins. With that in mind, people generally use the term to describe coins with lower market capitalizations. On this site we say major alt if we mean coins with the top market caps that arent Bitcoin, and we say minor alts to describe all other cryptos. See a list of altcoins.

Simply put, altcoins are cryptocurrency alternatives to bitcoin. In general, altcoins work very similarly to bitcoin. However, there can be some minor differences between different coins. Below is a list of the most important facts about altcoins:

To learn more about the different types of available coins, be sure to visit our page Listing theCurrently Available Altcoins.

To learn more about altcoin in general and for comprehensive altcoin resources, be sure to visit altcoins.com.